


An Abbreviated Account of Clint Barton's Poor Life Choices

by sarcastical



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Deaf Clint Barton, F/M, M/M, Not Beta Read, Origin Story, Recruitment, birb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-27
Updated: 2016-09-14
Packaged: 2018-07-27 03:04:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7600957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarcastical/pseuds/sarcastical
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a few of Clint Barton's terrible decisions and the paperwork it caused Coulson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Beginings

**Author's Note:**

> Hey People  
> It's my first attempt at writing fanfic so be nice please xx  
> Warning: Some Profanity

Clint heard a crash. A bullet thudded into the wall next to his head, causing the boy in his arms to bite back a sob. He needed to get out of here fast.  
The job was originally supposed to be your basic assassination job. But of course he had to get involved, put his ass in the fire – Dammit Clint you’re supposed to be smarter than this. He’d intervened to save the kids when he realised it was a people trafficking operation he was targeting and that the original plan (provide covering fire whilst explosives were planted underneath the two trucks and on the bridge) might kill the seven screaming children. So here he was, exchanging covering fire with both the traffickers and his ‘allies’. He so needed a new job. Spotting an opportunity, Clint leapt out of his hiding place, rolling over the firearm that lay in the open and getting off two shots before rolling into position behind a covering crate.   
A bullet smashed through the crate two centimetres from his ear.  
Well maybe not so good a cover.  
There were six of the traffickers remaining, three with injuries, two more which may or may not have run off into the night, and three of his ‘allies’ – oh and apparently a donkey. Clint filed away the donkey for later (seriously a donkey!?) and mentally began to work out the angles, with a smirk he raised the gun.  
…  
“Holy shit.” Said Sitwell.   
Phil deigned to give him a withering glare before turning back to the scene in front of him.  
Twelve men lay sprawled in the dirt which the SHIELD team was beginning to swarm around. All of them had been killed by a single bullet to the head, apart from two men which seemed to have been killed by a single arrow (arrow? Phil wondered). There were also some prints that looked suspiciously like hoof marks.   
“Pull any CCTV footage recorded from everywhere within a mile radius of here,” he ordered.   
Sitwell shook his head and turned to the techie next to him, issuing a stream of commands and desperately trying to give off an illusion of calmness (he wasn’t succeeding very well). Everyone studiously ignored the massive arrow painted on the wall in what appeared to be blood.   
Ten minutes later they discovered the source of the hoof prints enjoying an ice-cream along with several small children with similar ice creams. Both the donkey and one of the children were smeared in blood. Coulson mentally filed the day under his ‘Things not to tell my parents’ folder. The folder had grown disturbingly large lately.   
When the SHIELD team returned to the mobile command station they were concerned to note that the jet had gained a similar bloody arrow. This was going to be so much paperwork.  
…  
It was the next day and Coulson was beginning to get a headache. All of the CCTV footage had been magically erased and the tech department had been unable to retrieve more than a few fuzzy images from the memory banks. These fuzzy images appeared to show a single man back-flipping over a car, taking down four of the men [cut in the footage which is just static] shooting a man behind him without turning [sudden cut to an ad for toothpaste] and chasing a man down on the back of a donkey (presumably the donkey that had been found close to the scene). Coulson briefly wondered where on earth the advertisement had come from (they must be paying a lot to advertise on CCTV).  
None of the children had been able to provide much more information than that it was a single man, armed with a small pistol, one arrow and no bow whom had killed the men and saved them and that (unsurprisingly) the incident had been very scary for them. Oh and that the man had bought them all ice-creams. The donkey had remained silent on the matter.   
The dead men themselves had been identified respectively as members of the Yakuza or as a seemingly random (but very lethal) collection of mercenaries. Unfortunately, however, none of the corpses had been able to communicate either their murderer or where the rest of them were and had been dismissed as useless.   
Sitwell was of the opinion that Hawkeye had done it.  
Blake was of the opinion that Sitwell had a crush.  
Coulson was beginning to wish he had taken his parents advice and become a lawyer.  
“But it has to be him. No one else uses arrows, let alone arrows of that particular fletching.”  
“Dear God Sitwell, if you have memorised the fletching then you definitely need a new hobby, or life”  
“Shut up Blake, Hawkeye is number two on our watch list after the Black Widow - I’m only doing my job.”  
“I feel like both of you are missing the point that Hawkeye uses a bow. Not just an arrow. That would be excessively stupid and gimmicky, even for him.”  
“Aww you’re just still sore about that time he pinned you to the side of the surveillance van in Florence.”  
“Well I nearly died”  
“Be fair, Sitwell has a point. If he wanted you dead he would have got you with a headshot”  
Coulson graced them both with his best dead-eyed expression and went off to report their non-findings to Fury.  
…  
Clint was starving. There was a serious downside to firing on your supposed allies which was a severe lack of new commissions coming in. Nobody wanted to hire someone whose loyalty was in doubt. He was still pulling the occasional job until he took a commission which looking back was a very obvious trap. He killed the employer for it, but the effects – a broken leg for him and a terrible reputation regarding his employers’ safety – meant he was currently living in a garbage bin. Well perhaps not living, but that was certainly his cover until the SHIELD agents moved.   
There was a whole pile of them just across the street where the bodies of the assassins sent after him lay and he was currently busy trying to look like he was hiding a heroin habit in the hope they would overlook him. Honestly the organisation was becoming a pain in the ass. I mean a competent intelligence agency? Who has time for that? Unfortunately his “I dint see nuthin mister” routine didn’t seem to have put off the agent currently questioning him and Clint was beginning to wonder if he should play the ‘Is the ceiling melting or is that just me’ card. As he opened his mouth to begin it the agent interrupted him.   
“That’s an interesting set of calluses you have there – you a veteran”  
Shit. Shit. Shit.  
“Uh yeah, well at least b’fore the aliens y’know. They uh, came for me in ‘nam”  
Vietnam seriously what was he thinking!  
“Uhuh and have you seen anything interesting around here? We were looking for a guy with a bow and arrow if you’ve seen anyone like that. They’d be pretty hard to miss.”  
“Well I don’t know that I’d remember. Seems like maybe I’d need some kind of reason.”  
The agent eyed him sharply.  
“Well… That coat looks a bit torn. Perhaps you’d take a twenty for a new one”  
Clint smiled internally. The bloke was sharp but he’d have to get up a lot earlier to outsmart him.  
“Well there was a bloke a bit like that. He shot them and then climbed up the fire escape and onto the roof.”  
The suit gave him a sharp-eyed smile and handed him the note. Clint pocketed it with a grin.  
“Thank’ee mister. I’ll go get that coat.”  
And with that Clint got up and walked straight through the crime scene, past the FBI, SHIELD and police officers and into the fast food restaurant over the road. Suckers.  
“Who was that Sitwell?”  
“Just some junkie, persuaded him to remember our elusive archer – he reckons he went up the fire escape.”  
“If so then we may still get him with copters.”  
“Maybe.”  
Clint sat in the McDonalds and watched his crime scene. The agent he’d pinned in Florence was there looking just as blank as ever. Clint was impressed, the agent hadn’t even looked panicked pinned with his arrows to the side of a bus, two feet off the ground. The bald agent who’d kindly donated the lunch looked over. Clint waved.


	2. Meetings

…  
“So what you are telling me is that, despite our extensive resources, contacts in the various crime rings, the work of my best agents and one incident when we arrived on the scene only thirty seconds after the last gunshot, we still don’t even know what Hawkeye looks like – or even if this is even all the work of a single man.”  
“With respect sir, we are fairly sure it’s a single man. Sitwell has conducted extensive analysis of the arrows used and they were all made by the same hand, although we have been unable to pull any prints from them. Furthermore, we have been able to ascertain that he is currently running from a contract taken out on him by a dissatisfied customer.”  
Fury didn’t look impressed. But then, Fury never looked impressed.   
Coulson made a note to himself to punch Hawkeye if he ever met him for all the paperwork he was causing him (the urge had absolutely nothing to do with the Florence incident. Nothing at all.).   
“Perhaps, sir, our time might be better served concentrating on the issues with AIM than on hunting down one rogue assassin – no matter how talented this assassin might be. After all, we have no real reason to expect him to take us up on the recruitment or to be a reliable asset if he does – he has not exactly been consistent in his contracts.”  
Fury fixed him with a piercing stare.  
Coulson sighed.   
…  
When Coulson and Clint eventually met (properly for, as Sitwell argued, Clint staring at him from various rooftops shouldn’t really count) it was strangely enough back in Florence. The fact that he was back in Florence was bringing Coulson up in hives. Clint, incidentally, thought this was hilarious.  
Clint was there to take out a local drug lord who had angered the wrong person. SHIELD was there to collect an object in the drug-lord’s possession which they believed was responsible for some of the more ‘unusual’ side-effects the drug seemed to be having. Clint personally didn’t see what the politician was angry about – if he had sprouted wings he would have been thrilled. Sitwell would later comment that it was funny that SHIELD had finally made contact with Hawkeye on an actually unrelated mission. Blake would later comment that Sitwell’s turning up dead in a ditch strangled with his own tie would be funny seeing as Sitwell wasn’t wearing one. Coulson would mentally note that he apparently wasn’t the only one who was severely put out by the quantity of paperwork incurred by both the hunt for Hawkeye and Sitwell’s own, well, involvement.   
On an unrelated note Garrett was noting, across the world in Texas, that apparently lorries didn’t float.

Clint was lying on a rooftop. This in itself was not particularly unusual. As a sniper, he spent a great deal of time on rooftops and this particular spot wedged between an air conditioning unit and a low wall was actually reasonably comfortable as far as rooftops in February went. He even had an old abandoned mattress. No, what was unusual was that he was currently watching the blank-faced SHIELD agent beat up his mark through his scope. Clint was not impressed. If the agent apprehended or killed his mark he would lose the commission. He was not losing that commission.   
Clint took the shot.  
All hell broke loose.   
Coulson jerked back as an arrow smashed through the eye-socket of the man he was wrestling with, narrowly avoiding his own face. As he let the man drop to the ground, instinctively searching for the figure that must be lying on the rooves that sloped away across the window he noticed a strange flicker of movement. Followed by the entire building exploding.   
His ear-piece promptly followed the building into the abyss and dealt him a shock of static.   
“Sitwell do you copy?”  
“Does anybody copy?... Hawkeye is here and just took out our target”  
Coulson swore at the answering static and pulled his ear-piece out. He could already imagine how much paperwork this was going to require, he might even have to pull out the dreaded B-19 form for God’s sake. He glanced at the door on the other side of the room and made the executive decision to push on and see if he could recover the artefact, trusting his team to evacuate the area and sweep for further threats. A small part of him hoped that Hawkeye had been taken out by the bomb, a larger part of him was complaining that Hawkeye probably set the bomb. Coulson failed to notice the mattress crawling down the street outside the window, preoccupied as he was by his mission. He would later note this down as an unacceptable slip.   
Coulson burst through into the next room and then into a long corridor which ended in a stairwell, a stairwell which did not only go up as the building plans suggested. Excellent. Coulson descended down the stairs.   
Murmurs. Coulson paused. There appeared to be someone round the corner. However, in this uncertain situation he was loathe to give away the element of surprise – his gunshots would alert any previously preoccupied guards to his presence when the explosion had done such a good job of distracting everyone. Making his mind up Coulson ducked into the room on his left to avoid the passers-by. Unfortunately, they followed him into the room (it appeared to be some kind of office). Nevermind, Coulson rectified their mistake by grabbing the closest object (a stapler) and using it to smack the intruder (or was he the intruder?) round the head with it before elbowing him in the chest and sellotaping his hands together. Hmm. Coulson paused and looked around. He pocketed the stapler and a few paperclips and grabbed a lukewarm coffee mug.   
He exited the room and moved round the corner. A steel door stood in front of him. Hydraulically sealed by the looks of it and with an eight-digit keypad lock. Coulson gave the lock a cursory glance before giving it up as unrealistic. Coulson considered his options, he could either go back to the guard he had incapacitated in the hope of a code or… His fist smashed through the wall next to the door. Flimsy plywood. Bloody Amateurs. Coulson reached through his newly-made hole and unlocked the door from the other side. A small part of him almost hoped that he had set of an alarm so he could beat up whoever was responsible for such terrible security protocols. Dimly, his mind registered gun-fire from the building above him. Ah well, Sitwell would deal with it.   
The room he now entered was white and sterile. Judging from the pile of colourful packaging in a box to the side, and the various machinery hanging round the room it was normally used to manufacture the drug. Currently, however…  
SQUAWRK  
Oh God.  
SQUARWK  
That was a very large robin. A very large angry looking robin. And was that?  
“Hey,” said Clint.  
Oh joy it was the random junkie from McDonalds. The random junkie from outside McDonalds whom was currently being sat on by the very large robin?  
“Erm,” Said Clint. “If, by chance you are here looking for a strange glowy piece of metal that makes people grow wings and birds just… grow…. Then, well, it’s through there.” He gestured to an empty doorway, struggling somewhat to extricate his arm from underneath the bird, which gave another mighty and indignant SQUAWRK.  
“Aww come on bird” the man muttered.   
It was at that point Coulson dimly registered the very old and disgusting looking mattress propped up in one corner and covered in both blood and bullet holes. Coulson decided to prioritise. He gave the bird a stern look, grabbed a box with which to contain the artefact, contained said artefact, used the computer system set up in one corner to radio Sitwell for assistance and quarantine and then, and only then, did he allow himself to consider the potential implications of the quiver that the bird occasionally revealed on the man’s back as it adjusted its seating. The quiver for a bow and arrows.  
“Holy Shit.” Said Sitwell.  
“If you are not careful that’s going to become your catchphrase”, commented Coulson.  
“Hey I don’t suppose that now the cavalry is here they would like to help with the bird that is currently crushing me?”  
Both of the agents turned to the man, to Hawkeye, considered him a second, then Sitwell nodded.   
Coulson gestured to agents Cratz and Muller, who were currently supervising the clean-up. “Agents, could you please ensure that the robin is not moved until last, we would not like the suspect to escape”  
“Suspect?” Spluttered Hawkeye.  
Coulson gifted him with a small, savage smile. “I apologise Sir, but it should help to dramatically decrease my paperwork if you were to be prevented from escaping” and was in no way related to Coulson’s anger at Florence. “Perhaps we should think of it as poetic justice”  
Blake gave him a look from across the room which Coulson easily translated as “you are not coming across half as subtle as you think you are”. Coulson retaliated with his best “piss off” look.  
“And perhaps, after that, Mr Hawkeye, we could move round to the subject of your unconditional surrender to Shield?”  
The robin let off a triumphant sounding fart. Coulson wondered vaguely what exactly Hawkeye had done to anger it. He didn’t think birds had paperwork.


	3. Form D20 - Capture of a Suspect

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it is such a short one.

The man tentatively identified as Hawkeye wasn’t saying anything.   
Well maybe that wasn’t true. When they’d initially cuffed him to a junior agent he had complained that he usually insisted on dinner first; for the entire drive and flight back to base he had treated them all to a rousing rendition of 9999 bottles sitting on a wall (sadly interrupted at 342 bottles as Coulson had promised himself that should Hawkeye reach 300 he would strangle him in his seat); once back at base he had commented that they were clearly compensating for something with the size of the building. Now though…  
Hawkeye was staring blankly at a point just to the left of Coulson’s ear. Coulson sighed and repeated the question  
“Please could you explain what you were doing at the aforementioned property and your possession of advanced tactical weaponry.”  
Hawkeye’s gaze didn’t shift. Neither did he open his mouth.  
“Mr Barton – that is your name is it not? Your prints are on file for a petty theft charge aged nineteen. – if you choose not to communicate with us we will have no choice but to place you in high security custody and try you for both the assassinations of various people under the alias Hawkeye but also by association as an accessory to or possibly a mercenary under Warren Clayton’s drug ring. However, if you were to choose to be of use or at least speak we may be able to mitigate any punishment.”  
Coulson idly wondered if maybe they had somehow broken Hawkeye. Perhaps the force of his metal ‘shut-up’ chorus during the 9999 bottles sitting on a wall song had broken Hawkeye’s ability to make annoying quips.  
“Isn’t the all-leather clothing scheme a bit much. Dude looks like a matrix extra”  
Apparently not.   
Coulson resisted the urge to look down and check that his outfit had not magically transformed from a mixed fibre suit to a leather catsuit. Barton must be attempting to get into his head, there was, after all, no one else in the room for him to describe.  
“I’m sorry was that comment of some relevance to my previous statement?”  
Barton suddenly turned his gaze in him and Coulson suddenly became uncomfortably aware of the intensity of the man’s stare. It was only years of training that prevented him from allowing his discomfort to show. Instead he worked on maintaining his own blank, calm expression. He decided to clarify, “To whom are you referring?”  
A sly grin worked its way up the man’s face.   
“The dude with the leather coat. Well and also the chick in the leather catsuit next to him but maybe not her so much as she is rocking that look. Leatherboy just ain’t pulling it off. And don’t even get me started on the man at the back – why he thought no one would notice that his shirt and jacket weren’t matched God only knows.”  
Coulson felt a prickle run up his neck as he realised that Hawkeye was staring at the one-way mirror, behind-which sat Deputy-Director Fury, Level five and protégé of Fury, Maria Hill, and Jasper Sitwell in a mismatched outfit that had resulted from his borrowing a jacket of Phil’s to cover the bloodstain in his shirt. Barton had been brought a separate route to the room and, whilst he had seen a bloodstained Sitwell on the jet, he had not seen the consequent clothing change.   
Barton sat smirking at him, confident that he had freaked Coulson and regained the high-ground. He was right, but Coulson was not going to let him know it.  
“I’m afraid the fashion choices of my associates are not your concern Mr Barton, rather, we would ask you to consider your future options and particularly what you might gain by choosing to cooperate.”  
“Is this a recruitment pitch?”  
“Whilst we SHIELD are interested in your skills we would prefer you not to think of this as a pitch – after all that would suggest you had the power here – rather as a generous offer to absorb you into our ranks in order to shelter you from the coming problems, for the appropriate commitment of course.”  
Coulson mentally made a note to have Barton’s eyes tested and DNA checked for indications of abilities. (Forms M6-notation 4b for a suspect or 4a for an asset, a H626 and P12).   
“Well I’d say that all depends on whether I would be forced to adopt SHIELD’s uniform policy. I really don’t think skin-tight leather would suit me,” Barton smirked.  
Coulson fleetingly thought that he disagreed with Barton about the leather-thing, he then officially designated himself far too sleep deprived to continue to deal with this if he was having THOSE kinds of hallucinatory thoughts.  
“Well perhaps I should leave you to consider your options, don’t go anywhere.” Score one for him.


	4. Form I11-Agent Creation of a New Form: Escaped Suspect In Ceiling. NB: Stolen shoes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AHh sorry for the late update I've been holidaying in the sun (and rain).

The door slid shut behind Coulson and Clint began preparing to escape. He could see Leatherman, Cat-girl and Baldy watching him intently from behind the glass – all with identical frowns. Clint waited and watched as Coulson slipped in and started murmuring to Fury before starting, glancing at Clint (who smiled and waved) and motioning Fury to follow him outside of the observation box and outside of Barton’s range of vision. The first order of business, find some shoes so that he could escape onto the street. Clint carefully maintained eye-contact with the remaining agents as he smoothly removed the cuffs (if only the bird had been so easy to remove) ensuring that he did not set off the sensors. He had already assessed and categorised the security systems both in the room and on his journey to the room and now all he needed was…  
Sitwell sneezed and without further ado Hawkeye swung himself smoothly into a handstand on his seat and up into the ceiling (who on earth though those polystyrene ceiling tiles would hold him even if they were 12 feet in the air?). From there it was just a quick wiggle and he was in the ducts. He dimly registered the cries of alarm beneath him now (the ceiling must be thicker than he thought for it to be so quiet) and set off into the depths of the building.   
As he had suspected there were no cameras in the vents. Indeed, quite the opposite, many of the segments seemed to have been labelled by the staff that had put them together. According to the pencil marks he was currently in H2 and travelling into H1. It was pretty typical altogether Clint thought – incredibly high-tech and smart but absolutely zero imagination. What was funnier, they seemed to have sent someone up after him judging by the various wheezing, banging and swearing noises that dogged his footsteps (were they footsteps if he was crawling?). Time to have some fun.  
Clint had been building a mental map of the building and logical ventilation in his head since he had first seen it as he exited the truck. Now, he put that knowledge to use. Slipping down a narrow side-shaft Clint began working towards the edge of the building where presumably the ventilation shafts would narrow for practical reasons. As he went he made sure to move slowly enough and make enough noise that his clumsy shadow would be able to follow. He was gaining, gaining… Clint threw the disassembled handcuffs through an improbably narrow corner before backing away down another intersection in silence. The closely following SHIELD agent rushed past (looking decidedly out of breathe) and launched himself down after the noise and – predictably – stuck. Unfortunately for the SHIELD agent, he not only stuck but seemed possessed of a more than average stubbornness, choosing to continue his attempt to follow the noise rather than to escape what was becoming a very tight fit. Until, with a final heave, the agent realised that his arms were pinned. It was at this moment that, moving silently, Clint snuck up behind the trapped agent and stole his shoes. Ignoring the cries of rage, he then silently slipped away, down out of the ventilation into a cupboard, and then down again to the crawl space in the floor – they would now be far too busy searching the ventilation to look for him here.   
Clint tried on the shoes he had stolen from the bald agent. They fit terribly. Clint sighed and moved on. Time for an escape route.  
On the assumption that SHIELD would be watching all the exits for his escape, Clint decided to travel deeper into the building instead in hopes of an alternative. Did shady government agencies build secret tunnels? Clint sure hoped they did. He had to be more careful in the crawl space than in the vents for fear of damaging the ceiling below and revealing his whereabouts but Clint managed. It was the buzzing that got him in the end.  
He had been hearing it in his ears since the explosion but it was getting louder, moving from his eardrums into the centre of his head in a concerted effort to get him killed. In a word, Clint was beginning to get scared. He had damaged his ears before but never this badly and it seemed to be getting worse, even his balance was beginning to slip and he needed his balance. He would be dead if this was permanent. He had only survived this long as a mercenary through hypervigilance, losing one of his senses was second in severity only to damaging his hands. He had to get out.  
Below and above him Clint could hear the conversations of members of staff, cutting in and out as they walked above and starting to loose words in the static. It seemed that his escape had been advertised to the entire staff and that someone called Fury would be doing unspeakable things to a Sitwell if Clint wasn’t found. Interestingly, someone else called Coulson would apparently be doing unspeakable things to Sitwell anyway for damage to a ventilation shaft. Clint almost felt sorry for the guy, almost. Oh and here was the unfortunate Sitwell himself apparently. A group of footsteps stopped a few inches to the right of Clint’s head.   
“They’re all mad I lost him in the ventilation but I didn’t see anyone else following me in. Bloke’s damn fast and I certainly wasn’t the one that underestimated him with that cell, it’s not even really my case!”  
A second dry voice then spoke up.  
“I’m sure that your pleas will work wonders on Coulson when he discovers that Hawkeye escaped using your lost shoes in some kind of Heath Robinson style device.”  
“He hasn’t left the building yet”  
“That we know of”  
“He can’t hide forever in a building like this. We’ll find him eventually.”  
“Exactly how long was your secretary hiding her child in that stationary cupboard for?”  
“That was an entirely different scenario.”  
“No you’re right missing an incompetent secretary’s efforts to hide her two year old rather than pay day-care for four months is actually worse. At least Hawkeye is a professional. You were outsmarted by an infant.”  
“I think it was technically my secretary that did the outsmarting. Besides, wasn’t she eventually revealed to have been a plant by AIM.”  
“You are really not helping your case. The incompetence of AIM is actually legendary. Do you even remember the cabbage incident?”  
A sigh.  
“I still don’t even understand why she bothered hiding the kid – don’t we have free childcare?”  
The voices moved on.   
Clint tried to shake the growing fuzziness out of his head but only succeeded in making it worse. Huh, maybe he had a concussion?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've never heard of Heath Robinson I would 100% recommend looking up his designs they are great.  
> Might have done this chapter in one go without spellchecking so I apologise now for any horrific and glaring errors.


	5. Form A5 (subdivision 13) Intake of a New Asset.

Agent Felix Blake, duct-taped to his office chair in the monitor room, was having an exceedingly bad day. It had started well, he had come into the office to the news that they had captured and identified Hawkeye, followed by the news that Hawkeye had escaped and thoroughly humiliated Sitwell so that his shoeless, trapped body had to be rescued from the ceiling in a screw-up that would be coming out of his wages. These had both been big pluses to Blake, who saw the downfall of Sitwell as easily adequate recompense for the paperwork that would be incurred for all senior staff regardless of how dramatically uninvolved he had been so far. Unfortunately the key words there had been ‘so far’. This was as Blake’s day had taken a decided turn for the worse when Hawkeye had dropped out of the ceiling, incapacitated him, and then duct-taped him to his chair. He had then proceeded to chatter inanely, waving the gun he had confiscated from Blake around, whilst the kidnapee in question glumly watched the clock tick closer to the end of lunch and his last chance to get his hands on the nice tacos. Why was it always on taco Tuesday?  
“So I mean leaving aside the frankly insulting job offer and the fact I had to steal some dude’s shoes I mean your vents are very dusty and I’m beginning to think you haven’t thought this intelligence agency thing through at all. Also, on my way here I came across four, that is FOUR, people making out in closets. One of the guys was on his own, it was all very disturbing. Couldn’t you at least keep the ducts PG rated for the children?”  
Why, why, why was it always him listening to the loonies rant. At least Sitwell hadn’t had to get kidnapped by the guy.   
“Excuse me”  
Hawkeye didn’t actually seem to have noticed Blake’s attempt to establish some measure of control over the conversation and had moved on to complaining about a giant bird (giant bird?) and rating it against his other ‘aviary incidents’ whatever the hell those were.  
“Excuse me. Hey. HEY. HELLO ARE YOU EVEN PAYING ATTENTION. HAWKEYE. HAWKEYE.”  
With a sudden jerk Hawkeye stopped talking.  
“I hate to be the one suggesting things like this but I would very much like to get some lunch today so if you’d like to speed this along a little, make some ransom demands, start a firefight etc. whatever, please could you maybe get on with it?”  
The blank, slightly hunted expression pierced him for a few more moments before it was swiftly replaced with the earlier cocky smile and loose posture. Blake sighed again, kidnapped by a man whose heart wasn’t even in it.  
“Honestly dude I just fancied a chat, a sympathetic ear, a buddy, a pal…”  
Blake was seriously beginning to consider knocking himself out on the desk in front of him, anything to escape the incessant chatter. This man was even worse than the last assistant Sitwell had found him and she insisted on playing Korean pop-music at twice the recommended decibels and sneezing in his face. Blake wasn’t even sure why Sitwell had taken it upon himself to get him assistants but he suspected it was part of a war on his sanity. Sitwell had probably arranged for Hawkeye to kidnap him. He was going to walk down to the canteen and find it livestreaming, or, god forbid, like that time with the music video… Blake stopped that thought where it was, the last thing he needed now was flashbacks to that particular incident.  
“That’s quite a nasty shiner dude you should get that checked out”  
Blake glared at the now innocent looking assassin which had given him the aforementioned black-eye and decided that threatening him bodily harm would probably only result in more paperwork when Hawkeye sued for assault or something equally headache inducing.   
“No, I’m serious man the way that looks you might have a hairline fracture along your cheekbone, maybe even some swelling.”  
Dear god the man actually looked concerned. Blake was going to kill Sitwell, even if this wasn’t his fault.   
“Thank you for your concern”, he managed to force out from between gritted teeth, “but if you were perhaps to release me I could go to medical?”  
“Well you see I could do that but then you’d probably attack and then I’d need medical and I don’t even know where medical is and even if I could find it I would probably sub-par and then I would have long-term complications.   
Aha, Blake was beginning to see the man’s game, he was going to attempt to drive him insane. It was clearly a cunning plan to have him sent into an early retirement where all of his food would come mashed up and bland and there wouldn’t be any tacos – or nice coffee.  
“If you are that concerned I could always give you directions to medical. They have lovely comfortable beds, state of the art facilities, chocolate pudding – they even got us very generous health insurance so I wouldn’t have to sue you for my eye or even for when I break a knuckle breaking your nose later.”  
The assassin, much to Blake’s dismay, looked delighted. Well if you couldn’t beat them…  
…  
Clint was, at this point, relying rather heavily on his lip-reading skills to pick out the agent’s words over the rising buzz in his ears. He felt it rather important, however, that he keep up an impression of being in total control else the agent would probably attempt to escape. He had kind of gone through panic at this point and was now talking on autopilot, waiting for his brain to chip in with an amazing suggestion for his escape, or fixing his ears, or finding a time machine to reverse this situation or… okay Clint had nothing.   
The agent, to Clint’s dismay, also wasn’t proving very helpful. Far from cracking under the pressure like most agents were wont to do and letting some vital piece of information slip in their anger, the agent he had managed to capture seemed stuck on the topic of the excellent healthcare received by SHIELD agents, even going so far as to talk about the man in the office down the hall who had apparently gone blind in the line of duty but now worked in analysis in a desperate bid to shut out Clint’s own voice and allow himself time to escape.  
Hang on.  
Clint started to listen with more interest.  
“Although the higher level agents like me paradoxically always seem to end up in the worse rooms. Well, they aren’t bad from a decorating point of view I suppose but the coffee machine at the end of the hall is dire so honestly it’s a nightmare. So, you know, if you plan on hurting me I don’t suppose you’d care to leave me well enough for the two flights of stairs for some decent coffee.”  
Clint wasn’t stupid, there was a limited market for a damaged assassin, and with a badly healed broken leg and whatever fresh hell was erupting in his inner ear he was rapidly becoming more and more of a danger to himself. Plus, to give the goons who’d been chasing him credit, they were about the most competent agency he’s been chased by. Clint guessed it also might be quite amusing to see what it took to make the blank-faced agent break too, as judging by the conversations that had floated past him in the walls, the man breathed paperwork and rules.   
“I’m going to surrender myself to SHIELD” Clint announced.  
The duct-taped agent furrowed his eye-brows.   
“I don’t suppose you could omit this from the report then.”  
“What?”  
“Tell you what, you don’t mention this happened and save me the paperwork and I’ll refrain from breaking your nose.”  
Hawkeye smiled, placed a knife on the agent’s thoroughly duct-taped lap, and exited through the ceiling with reasonable grace.   
…  
Ten minutes later, Coulson was walking down the corridor fuming silently to himself when a figure burst down through the ceiling in a shower or polystyrene tiles and a yell of:  
“I SURRENDER. TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER.”   
Coulson considered for maybe half a second, and then shot Barton in the leg.  
…  
When Clint Barton, Hawkeye, Vanquisher of ceiling tiles and wielder of the duct tape, woke up, it was to find himself in a hospital bed in a thoroughly secured room (even by his standards) and with a small mountain of paperwork on his bedside cabinet. Oh and someone had handcuffed him to a biro.   
Phil Coulson, sat in the seat next to his bed gave him a sharp, insincere smile and handed him two large files overflowing with papers.  
“Good morning Specialist Barton. My what a lot of paperwork you have accrued.”

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone spots any errors please message me them so I can correct!x


End file.
